Celebration Event #1 - the Turn
Ninaofsouthampton
Thu 29 Nov 2018 06:25
I know what you’re thinking, hash browns, bacon, fried eggs, black pudding, maybe some pancakes and waffles chucked in for good measure. Then perhaps a few glasses of champagne with a few shots to chase down the waffles.
Not quite. Life onboard is far simpler. Breakfast was scrambled eggs and bread and our alcohol allocation allows for one small beer (apparently getting blind drunk in the middle of the Atlantic isn’t the best idea, who knew). I’m ‘complaining’ but actually, scrambled egg has never tasted so good, it beat the bran flakes I had yesterday (I couldn’t find my chocolate cereal at 6 am sadly). The beer was wonderfully cold and was perfect as the sun went down.
Other celebration events that we/you can look forward to are every 1000 nautical miles and half way. You might say that making a small turn towards the place we should be heading for in the first place shouldn’t count. To you I say, I don’t care what you think. In all honesty, it has felt like a momentous occasion and it definitely makes better reading on the chart (although I was quite looking forward to my holiday in Cape Town). We’ve had a brilliant run so far, making great progress (hopefully better progress than most!) and the weather forecast looks similarly good for the next few days. We will continue to make calculations between ourselves as to how quick we are actually going to be, last one I heard was tomorrow ... at least that would put an end to this blog ...
Having written the above I was going to have a nice relaxed afternoon and try and actually open my book (haven’t quite found the time yet; after four hours trying to think of something to write about in this blog it’s usually my turn to be on watch again). I had taken over the helm (driving the boat) while the others relaxed below deck. Next thing I know I hear a small metallic clunk on the deck and see something small bounce overboard. Happily on a boat there are lots of very small, very crucial things that it is really best to avoid losing. We spent the next hour and a half looking for this small object but to no avail. Having concluded that the mast probably wasn’t going to fall off* we are still none the wiser so are cracking on full speed ahead.
The good news is, we are hitting new highs of speed and definitely feel confident of hitting St Lucia within the next 1-5 weeks.
*Dear concerned families, I am probably exaggerating, we did stress test everything and feel comfortable powering on ahead. While my life mantra happens to be ‘it is probably always fine’ there are far more sensible heads onboard.